


Quid Pro Quo (Curiosity Killed the Cat)

by silverscreens



Category: Naruto
Genre: Angst, Canonical Character Death, Curse of Hatred, Kakashi-centric, M/M, just uchiha stuff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-24
Updated: 2018-06-24
Packaged: 2019-05-27 16:52:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 577
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15028970
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/silverscreens/pseuds/silverscreens
Summary: Recently, there’s whispers that Uchiha eyes are stained red and black by the blood of their friends and the ash in their lungs.





	Quid Pro Quo (Curiosity Killed the Cat)

You’re four when your babysitter, a soft-spoken Hyuuga girl barely out of her teens, stops you from retrieving your ball after a particularly zealous kick landed it on the outskirts of the Uchiha district. She was too well bred to speak ill of another clan, but you saw the panic in her eyes when she took your hand and walked you home.

On your first day at the academy, a tiny girl with golden hair visibly stiffens as that loud boy with obscure orange goggles walks past. When he’s out of earshot, she whispers to her friend that if you look an Uchiha in the eye blood and death will haunt your dreams until the day you die.

Days later, you’re pried off of father’s lifeless body and the hokage is telling you everything will be alright, son. There is no funeral, as father’s been branded a traitor and in Konoha brands follow you beyond the grave. You sit by his headstone every night and only years later you realize it’s always clean and polished courtesy of a tall man in a police force uniform.

(His name is Uchiha Seijuro and he was in father’s genin team a decade before you were born. Father thought the world of his three students and only one bothers to bring flowers to his grave.)

You’re ten when you become the youngest jounin in Konoha history. You’re a shinobi without civilian roots, your late father’s genin team had an Uchiha from the main branch, and Obito’s your teammate and maybe something more. They’re smart enough to keep quiet when you’re around.

(You hear them anyway, in Konoha everyone who’s anyone knows everyone and everything.)

There’s the small things — mothers wrapping a protective arm around their sons, grown men tripping over themselves to get out of the way, children cocking their heads and staring — when an Uchiha appears on civillian grounds.

Then there’s the urban legends that appear one after another because even civilian children know that just like sweets and milk and grain and spices, power comes with a price — a fair price.

(Curiosity killed the cat but they still want to know.)

Recently, there’s whispers that Uchiha eyes are stained red and black by the blood of their friends and the ash in their lungs.

You chuckled at that because it’s far more poetic than they deserve.

(You chuckled at that because Obito would have laughed himself to tears and Itachi would have blinked and smiled evenly.)

It was a simple answer, more vernacular than people would like to believe — the price of the sharingan was the perfect blindness of a newborn. It’s an awful price, you remember Obito telling you one afternoon after a sparring session, one that no Uchiha will ever pay because good shinobi die young and victorious on the battlefield. Because good shinobi would rather drive a blade through their hearts than allow for senescence to steal what’s rightfully theirs.

(You remember wiping a bead of sweat from his forehead just to touch him and counting his teeth with your tongue. You remember wondering, when he was fast asleep on your bed, how could death be victorious.)

But as he lay dying in a war he had no place in for a people that never deserved him, you wept and screamed for the first time in eight years because the price of the Uchiha eyes was fathers who chose pride over peace and honor over sons.

**Author's Note:**

> Eight years - Sakumo committed suicide when Kakashi was 5, Obito died when he was 13.
> 
> Going by how they treated naruto when he was just a kid, I imagine civilians were not very fond of the Uchiha family even before the kyuubi's attack and don’t try to hide it.


End file.
